


The Séance

by DwarvenBeardSpores



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Family Dynamics, Gen, Ghosts, Halloween, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 03:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12572748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenBeardSpores/pseuds/DwarvenBeardSpores
Summary: It's Halloween, and Frankie wants to hold a séance. Grace is not quite on board with that idea.





	The Séance

**Author's Note:**

> My mom and I watched all of Grace and Frankie this summer, and it was great. I wrote this for her birthday, and am posting it here with her permission.
> 
> Happy Halloween everybody!

Sometimes Grace could make educated guesses about what she’d find at the bottom of the stairs, based on the season or the tides or the phase of the moon, or whatever it was Frankie took behavioral cues from. She’d tried for quite a while to predict and observe, as though her housemate was a brand on the stock market. That was exhausting and, quite frankly, fruitless, so most days now Grace just took her chances. 

She could’ve predicted this one, though. Frankie was swooping around the living room in a witch’s hat and a red and black cape with- were those fake vampire teeth? Eugh. 

“Happy Halloween,” Grace said dryly, as she dodged the creature of the mid-afternoon. The kids were supposed to stop by later, and she figured she’d bake some of the seeds Frankie had gutted out of a pumpkin yesterday. ‘For old time’s sake,’ although Grace wasn’t sure she’d ever cooked pumpkin seeds in her life. Maybe once, twenty years ago. 

Frankie replied with something that was probably “happy Halloween,” but was garbled by the vampire teeth. 

“Can you take those out?” Grace said. 

“Ifgh parfg ofgh mfgh cofgtugh,” said Frankie. 

Grace stared until Frankie folded and pulled the teeth out of her mouth.

“It’s part of my costume,” Frankie repeated. She gestured at the rest of the ensemble: hat, cape, sparkly pants and hairy slippers. 

“Yeah.” Grace said, taking it all in. “A glam were-witch-pire. Can’t be one of those without choking on plastic.”

Frankie rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’ll keep them out for now.” Grace glanced over and saw Frankie shove them in her pocket, which was gross but at least no one would sit on them accidentally. (She sent the universe a small ‘thank you’ for the fact that Frankie didn’t wear dentures.) 

“Where did you put the pumpkin seeds?” Grace asked. They had been in a big Tupperware, that might’ve gone in the fridge, or…

“I dunno. Hey, how’d you like to talk to ghosts?” 

“I wouldn’t,” Grace said. “Also, ghosts don’t exist.” Miracle of miracles, the seeds were in the fridge.

“I’m not even going to validate that with an answer,” Frankie answered. “Of course ghosts exist! And I’ll prove it to you. We’ll talk to some, right here in this very house.” 

“No thanks.” Waste of time aside, Grace would rather not deal with any trick of the light or house-settling noise making it seem like the house could actually be haunted. Best case, they’d both go to bed spooked. Worst case, Frankie would freak out, and they’d end up with the burglary debacle all over again. 

“But it’s Halloween,” Frankie insisted. “And there is no better time to get in touch with the terrifying and possibly murderous departed.” 

“Wow, you’re really selling it.” Grace pulled some butter and salt out of the fridge to coat the seeds in; that's what the internet had said to do, so that's what she was going to do. And it would be great. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she realized that Frankie wasn't just swooping haphazardly. She was clearing things off the coffee table and putting them God-knows-where. The magazines were... just gone, apparently, and the mugs shoved guiltily behind a lamp. Working on instinct, Grace plotted and executed an intercept course before the TV remote disappeared too. She snatched it out of Frankie's hands and placed it safely under the TV, so efficiently that Frankie didn't protest. She just moved onto the last thing on the table, a festive fake-pumpkin centerpiece. 

"Do you have to do that?" Grace demanded, as Frankie carried it in the direction of the kitchen. 

"I need the table clear for the séance," Frankie replied. 

Grace liked that centerpiece. She liked it in the middle of the table. Definitely not wherever Frankie was going to put it, which was possibly in the microwave. "Well don't just drop it anywhere. I spent good money on that." 

Frankie waved a hand. "You got it on sale." 

"No, I had a coupon, and I had to fight with that poor cashier to make her take it." 

"Okay, fine. So it's a spoil of war." In the end, Frankie plunked it on the counter, which was not the worst thing she could've done. 

"We're still not having a séance," Grace said, and Frankie responded with a dismissive "pssh." 

Centerpiece disaster averted, Grace went back to her pumpkin seeds and a glass of wine, and Frankie went back to spookifying the living room. Grace had to admit, she admired Frankie's enthusiasm. It was almost like she was just decorating for the holiday, only more morbid and sleepover-y. 

Frankie filled the companionable silence by singing what was supposedly a Halloween song, but the only words she remembered were "spooky scary skeletons," over and over. Apparently Coyote had shown it to her on Youtube once. Grace made a mental note to glare at him severely later, but at least Frankie was happy. 

It turned out that baking pumpkin seeds was surprisingly fun, and not that much hassle once the pumpkin guts were taken care of. And they came out delicious. Frankie chomped them with effusive praise, and the adventure put Grace in such a good mood that when Frankie asked "do we have any candles?" she didn't hesitate to provide. There were plenty in the front hall closet.

"They're even," she said, carefully carrying five at once, "pumpkin spice scented." 

Frankie beamed. "You are adorable," she said, and Grace felt pretty good about that, too. She even allowed Frankie to give her the witch's hat, and found herself humming an endless repeat of "spooky scary skeletons" as she put out a bowl of candy by the door. Luckily, she was not in such a good mood that she forgot to warn Frankie to save the candy for trick-or-treaters.

"Oh come on," Frankie said. "We're living in a beach house surrounded on all sides by off-season vacationers and retired people. Nobody's going to come trick-or-treating." 

As if to spite her, the doorbell rang. 

"Trick or treat!" chorused the small army of children and grandchildren at the door. Grace’s girls and Frankie’s sons had somehow arrived together, which meant extra chaos. Wonderful. 

Grace ushered them through the front door, Mallory last due to some trouble with the double stroller.

Her kids were dressed up pretty elaborately. A Wonder Woman and a Green Power Ranger ran through the house, apparently hyped up on sugar already. One of the twins was dressed as Madeline from those picture books that Grace wasn’t sure she’d ever actually read, and the other was dressed like a crocodile, apparently because she was a biter. 

"I don't want to do that twin thing where it's like 'look, two copies of the same person', y'know?" Mallory explained. "They're their own people." Grace shrugged. Mallory had a point; she was a good mom.

"I still think she should've dressed them as Thing 1 and Thing 2," Brianna whispered loudly in Grace's ear. 

Brianna was dressed in a white pantsuit with angel wings and a halo. Her outfit was clearly intended to match Mallory's devil-horn headband, though Grace couldn't guess which one of them had come up with the idea. "So what's with the costume?" she asked. 

Brianna shrugged. "I though the angel costume came with a slutty dress, but it didn't. Just the wings. Hey, is that candy?”

"It's for the trick-or-treaters!" Frankie called from across the room. 

"Excuse you, I am a trick-or-treater?" Briana gestured to her halo, and then picked through the bowl of candy, shoving Kit-Kats in her purse. "Wow, mom. You really went all out this year. You used to only get Snickers, which are like, just on the cusp of not being sad." 

Grace rolled her eyes and decided that was one battle she did not need to get into. She instead escaped from the incredibly close front hall and joined Frankie, Bud, and Coyote in the kitchen. Bud was decked out in zombie makeup and, for some reason, a leather jacket. "I feel like you could've used a little more gore," Frankie was saying, her fingers fluttering near his forehead, and Grace privately disagreed. 

But Coyote. "What the hell is going on here?" Grace asked. He was wearing his normal clothes, but the wrists and collar were lined with plastic drinking straws. 

"I'm disowning him," Frankie said. 

"I'm a scarecrow," Coyote explained. "Except instead of straw, I'm stuffed with... straws. Get it?” 

The first thing Grace could think to answer with was “I need another glass of wine.” 

As she was pouring, Bud sniffed the air curiously. “Hey Grace, did you make pie?” 

He meant the candles. Frankie had lit them about ten minutes ago, and they were pretty strong. “No, that’s Frankie. I made pumpkin seeds.”

“Mom made pie?” Coyote said. 

“No, no. I was just getting ready for the séance.” 

“Uh, what séance? And what pie?” Briana sidled into the room and claimed the wine bottle as her own. Sneaky girl. 

“The séance that’s going to let us talk to ghosts, of course.” Frankie gestured at the table, where all five candles were lit, arranged in a circle over a vaguely magical-looking tablecloth. All the chairs were arranged around the table, and interspersed with various magical symbols and rocks and tacky halloween decorations, like a bowl with a mechanized hand sticking out of it. “I figure with all of us together, we can summon someone really powerful.” 

“So first of all,” Briana said, “talking to ghosts is only cool when you’re in high school. Second, it didn’t work then either.”

“You don’t know that,” Coyote said. “Maybe they just, I dunno, think teenagers are lame.” 

“They’re dead. They’re presumably kind of desperate.” 

“Okay, but Mom,” Bud interjected. “Aren’t séances supposed to be head at midnight? It’s like four in the afternoon.” 

Frankie just waved him off. “Oh, Bud. That’s a common misconception, but really. Ghosts are even older than we are, they probably go to bed around six thirty.” 

Grace laughed into her wine. 

“Please tell me you’re not talking about ghosts,” Mallory said. “You are going to freak Madison out so much… Also, did someone make pie?”

Grace tuned out the next bit of squabbling, tuned back in once the children had given up ghosts and moved on to evening plans. Apparently Coyote was going to help Mallory take the kids trick-or-treating for reasons unknown. “I think,” Briana mused, “I’m going to crash my employee’s party and scare everybody shitless.” 

“Wow,” Bud said. “Is that what young business people do on Halloween? I was just gonna watch a horror movie or something.” 

Both these thrilling plans and Frankie’s repeated threats of black-magic rituals meant that the kids didn’t stay long. They left with candy and pumpkin seeds galore, and the house was suddenly quiet again. 

“Wow,” Grace said. “Remind me never to feed any of them sugar, ever again.” 

Frankie wasn’t listening. She was looking sadly at the coffee table. “Well, there goes the séance,” she muttered. “There goes Halloween.” 

“Oh, come on,” Grace said. “You can do it without the kids, right?” 

“No,” Frankie said. “You need three or more people to hold a séance, everyone knows that.” 

“Everyone, huh.”

“Well… the internet said so! And anyway, it’s no fun if it’s just me.” Frankie shuffled over to the table and blew out the first candle. 

“Maybe next year,” Grace said. She was about to suggest they do something else, like watch a movie, but Frankie wasn’t paying her any attention. 

“You know who I was really hoping to talk to?” Frankie said. “I was thinking we could talk to Babe. She died so recently, so close to here. I wanted to tell her about Vybrant, and how we’re not mad at each other anymore, and see how she likes it. I bet she’s having a lot of fun parties.” She chuckled, a spark of mirth that faded back into melancholy. 

Grace sipped her wine and considered. When Frankie said “séance,” she hadn’t thought of Babe. She’d thought of Bloody Mary, or some other kind of movie monster. Maybe some stranger from the 1800s. 

Grace didn’t think she’d mind being haunted by Babe. 

It would maybe even be kind of… comforting. To know that she was still around somehow. Even though ghosts didn’t exist.

“Wait,” she said, and Frankie froze while blowing out the last candle. “Hang on, I’ve got an idea.” 

It took about ten minutes of rummaging through the attic before Grace found what she was looking for. She came downstairs with a flat box held proudly in her arms. “You might need three people for a séance,” she said, “but two people is exactly the right amount for a Ouija Board.” 

Frankie, who had apparently decided to drown her sorrows in fun-sized Crunch bars, looked up in amazement. “You own a Ouija Board?” 

“Yeah, for some reason.” Grace couldn’t remember ever buying it, she just remembered storing it in the attic many summers ago, when Mallory had found it in a closet and demanded it be hidden away. 

“You are a miracle,” Frankie declared, and went about the business of relighting all the candles while Grace set up the board. 

They ended up moving the set-up to the kitchen counter, so they could touch the pointer-thing without sitting on the floor and wrecking their hips. They turned out most of the lights and rested their hands side-by-side. The pointer-thing quivered under their touch. 

Frankie said an incantation of her own design, about summoning the spirits of the recently dead, about the magical powers of 5:30 pm on Halloween, and about how they were really not trying to get murdered, thank you. 

The pointer quivered more. Outside, a sharp wind blew past the window. 

“Is someone here with us?” Frankie whispered into the air. 

The pointer quivered its way over to YES. 

Frankie made a high screech, and Grace clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from doing the same thing. For a second she thought she felt a hand on her shoulder, but that was surely just her imagination. 

“Babe?” Grace heard herself saying. “Is that you?” 

Instead of a simple answer, the pointer shifted to the rows of letters. “Frankie, stop moving it,” Grace hissed. 

“I’m not moving it, you are,” Frankie hissed back, and that was about as much confirmation about the board’s magic Ouija powers as they were going to get. 

The pointer was spelling out an answer. I-T-A-I-N-T-T-H-E-W-I-N-D.

“It ain’t the wind,” Grace murmured. 

“That’s Babe all right,” Frankie said. 

“Oh my God, it really sounds like her.” 

“That’s cause it is!” 

“Shh! Ask something else.” 

Frankie scrambled for words. “Uh, Babe? How’re you doing out there? Are you having a good time?” 

A-O-K. 

“That’s not a word,” Grace said. 

“It’s a thing. A-okay. She’s doing well.” 

Grace took a breath, than another one. In the distance, someone whooped with holiday excitement and a car alarm went off. 

“That’s good,” Frankie said, conversational like she wasn’t speaking to their dead friend. “You know, we’ve been doing pretty well ourselves. We went into business making vibrators. And it was all thanks to you.” 

“Our-“ Grace’s voice trembled, and she tried to make it stop. “Our business is called Vybrant.” She looked around the room as she spoke, hoping to catch a glimpse of something supernatural, but it was still just their kitchen. 

“They’re especially for old people,” Frankie clarified. “With glow-in-the-dark buttons.” 

“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Grace said.

The Ouija board said P-R-O-U-D. 

“Oh my God.” Grace let go of the pointer altogether and clapped her hands over her mouth. Her heart banged around wildly in her chest, like it was trying to escape. “I can’t do this. I’ve got to- I can’t do this.” She was feeling absolutely everything. This wasn’t happening; it couldn’t be happening. Where the fuck was her wine? 

“Babe says ‘okay’,” Frankie reported back. “Bye Babe! We’ll talk to you later!” She waved at the air. 

“How the hell are you so calm about this?” Grace managed. “We just- we talked to- she-“ 

“Oh, I’m not calm,” Frankie said cheerfully. “I’ll probably freak about it in like ten minutes.”

“Okay,” Grace said. “Okay.” It wasn’t okay. But it also sort of was.

Frankie said “that went even better than a séance.” 

“Yeah. Wow.” 

They sat in the late-afternoon light for another few minutes. There was so much to say, and so they said nothing at all. Grace thought she felt a hand on her other shoulder, and couldn’t be sure if that was her imagination or not. She couldn’t manage to convince herself that what had happened wasn’t real. 

The doorbell rang.

Frankie snapped out of her contemplation first, and got up to serve the one trick-or-treater of the night.

“So,” she said when she returned. “What now?”

Grace let out a long breath. “How about no more ghosts. Let’s watch a monster movie or something. One of the old ones that doesn’t look even the tiniest bit real.” 

“Okay,” said Frankie. She packed up the Ouija board while Grace set up the TV. They huddled under blankets and munched on pumpkin seeds and chocolate. Between Frankie and now this ghost-Babe, Grace felt as though the house was even more unpredictable than usual. 

That’s what Halloween is for, said a voice in her head, that sounded both like herself and like Babe. 

“This is what Halloween is for,” she said without questioning it. 

“Yup,” said Frankie, and she grinned at Grace through plastic vampire teeth.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> I'd love to hear what you thought. 
> 
> I can also be found on tumblr as dwarven-beard-spores.


End file.
